field of argument; traced the proceedings of the government from the first mention of the scheme, censured both the measure and the means; and earnestly exhorted the ministry not to offer violence to the settled principles or shake the settled loyalty of the country.

The prime serjeant took notice of the arts which had been practised by the Anti-union faction, to delude and inflame the people. He accused the leaders of that party of having resorted to the usual auxiliaries of a bad cause-virulence, misrepresentation, clamor, and sedition. He then appealed to the well meaning and highly-respectable gentlemen who had opposed the Union, from a sincere opinion of its impolicy, whether it were just or candid to co-operate with the faction in preventing a cool discussion of the measure. As a great proportion of the kingdom had declared in its favour, he thought it the duty of the representatives of the people to give it a fair investigation.

Mr. Barrington, by serious reflection, was confirmed in his opinion that a revolutionary measure arising from the ashes of a rebellion, and grounded on the distractions of a nation, could not be permanent; and he dreaded the ultimate loss of British connexion from the pertinacity of those ministers, who wished to deprive Ireland of her independence.

Sir John Macartney and Mr. Egan supported, and Mr. Luke Fox opposed the amendment.

Mr. Grattan entered the house between Mr. William B. Ponsonby and Mr. Arthur Moore, whilst Mr. Egan was on his legs actually referring to the constitution of 1782. The re-appearance in parliament of the founder of that constitution, at that critical moment, and under those awful circumstances, electrified the house and galleries with an indescribable emotion of terrific joy and expectation. On rising to speak, he referred to the adjustment of 1782. The minister of Great Britain, he said, had come forward in two celebrated productions; he declared his intolerance of the parliamentary constitution of Ireland; that constitution, which he ordered the several viceroy's to celebrate, in defence of which he recommended the French war, and to which he swore the yeoman, that constitution he now declared to be a miserable imperfection, concurring with the men, whom he had executed for thinking the Irish parliament a grievance; differing from them in the remedy only: they proposing to substitute a republic, and he the yoke of the British parliament. They had seen him inveigh against their projects; let them hear him in defence of his own: he denied in the face of the two nations a public fact registered and recorded; he disclaimed the final adjustment, as being no more than an incipient train of negociation. That settlement consisted of several parts, every part a record, establishing on the

whole two grand positions: first, the admission of Ireland's claim to be legislated by no other parliament but that of Ireland: secondly, the finality imposed upon the two nations; regarding all constitutional projects affecting each other. Finality was not only a part of the settlement, but one of its principal objects; finali ty was the principal object of England, as legislative independency was the object of Ireland.

Having spoken very largely to the two points of regency and war, on which the Unionists rested their strongest arguments against the constitution of 1782, he thus continued: “ I will put 66 a question to my country. I will suppose her at the bar, and I "will then ask, Will you fight for an Union as you would for a " constitution? Will you fight for those lords and commons, who "in the last century, took away your trade, and in the present. your constitution, as for that king, lords, and commons who "restored both? Well, the minister has destroyed this constitu❝tion. To destroy is easy. The edifices of the mind, like the "fabrics of marble, require an age to build, but ask only minutes "to precipitate; and, as the fall is of no time, so neither is it "the effect of any strength. That constitution, which with more 66 or less violence has been the inheritance of this country for six *hundred years; that modus tetendi parliamentum, which lasted " and out-lasted of Plantagenet the wars, of Tudor the violence, "and of Stuart the systematic falsehood; even the bond and con"dition of our connexion, are now the objects of ministerial at"tack. The constitution which he destroys is one of the pillars "of British empire; dear in its violation, dear in its recovery. "Its restoration cost Ireland her noblest efforts: it was the habi"tation of her loyalty, as well as of her liberty, where she had "hung up the sword of the volunteer; her temple of fame, as "well as of freedom, where she had seated herself, as she vainly "thought, in modest security and in a long repose. I have done "with the pile which the minister batters, I come to the Babel

which he builds; and, as he throws down without a principle, "so does he construct without a foundation. This fabric he calls "an Union; and to this his fabric there are two striking objec“tions. First, it is no Union: it is not an identification of peo

ple, for it excludes the Catholics: Secondly, it is a consolida "tion of the legislatures; that is to say, it merges the Irish par "liament, and incurs every objection to an Union, without ob "taining the only object which an Union professes: it is an ex"tinction of the constitution, and an exclusion of the people."

What was the language of the minister's advocates to the Catholic body?" You were before the Union, as three to one; you "will be by the Union as one to four." Thus he founds their. hopes of political power on the extinction of physical consequence, I i

VOL. V.

and makes the inanity of their body and the non-entity of their country the pillars of their future ambition. He afterwards observed, that the minister, by his first plan, as detailed by his advocates, not only excluded the Catholics from parliament, but also deprived the Protestants of a due representation in that assembly; that he struck off one half of the representatives of counties, and preserved the proportion of boroughs as two to one; thus dismis sing for ever the questions of Catholic emancipation and parliamentary reform that, instead of reforming abuses in church and state, he wished to entail them on posterity; that, in lieu of Protestant ascendancy and Catholic participation, he proposed to constitute borough ascendancy in perpetual abuse and dominion; that it was his aim to reform the British parliament by nearly sixty boroughs, and that of Ireland by nearly five hundred and fiftyeight English and Scotch members, and thus by mutual mis-representation frame an imperial House of Commons, who would become the host of ministers, not the representatives of the people.

Of the predicament in which the new members would be placed, he said, never was there a situation, in which men would have so much temptation to act ill, and so little to act well. Subject to great expense and consequent distresses, having no support from the voice of an Irish public, no check, they would be in situation a sort of gentlemen of the empire, that is to say, gentlemen at large, unowned by one country, and unelected by the other, suspended between both, false to both, and belonging to neither. The sagacious British secretary of state had remarked, how great would be the advantage to the talents of Ireland, to have this opportunity in the British empire thus opened! that was what they dreaded: that the market of St. Stephen would be opened to the individual, and the talents of the country, like its property, draughted from the kingdom of Ireland to be sold in London. These men, from their situation (man was the child of situation), though their native honour might struggle, would be the adventurers of a most expensive kind, adventurers with pretensions, dressed and sold, as it were, in the shrouds and grave-clothes of the Irish parliament, and playing for hire their tricks on her tomb, the only repository the minister would allow to an Irish constitution; the images of degradation and the representatives of nothing; he then noticed the bribes offered by Mr. Pitt. To the Protestant church perpetual security was promised; but a measure that would annihilate the parliament by which that church was upholden, and disfranchise the people who supported that establishment, would rather tend, he said, to its disgrace and ruin.

To the Catholic clergy salaries were promised. Those who had been strongly accused of disloyalty were to be rewarded for imputed treasons against the king, if they would commit real treason against the people. Salaries, he allowed, might reasonably be given to those sectaries for the exercise of religious duty; but he could not approve the grant of wages for political apostacy. According to this plan, the Catholic religion would seem to disqualify its followers from receiving the blessings of the constitution, while their hostility to that constitution qualified them to receive a salary for the exercise of their religion, which would thus be at once punished by civil disability and encouraged by ecclesiastical provi sion: as good Catholics they would be disqualified, and, as bad citizens, would be rewarded.

A commutation of tithes formed another bribe. It had formerly been observed by some of the king's ministers, in opposition to a proposal of that kind from Mr, Grattan, that it would tend to the overthrow of the church; but now, he said, the premier was not unwilling to overturn the church, if he could at the same time overturn the constitution.

Commercial

Bribes were also offered to the mercantile body. benefits were holden out for political annihilation; and an abundance of capital was promised; but first, a great part of the landed capital of the country would be taken away by the necessary operations of an Union. This rival being removed, commercial capital, it was supposed, would quickly take its place. But these and other promises of the minister would probably be found visi onary. He goes on (said Mr. Grattan) asserting with great ease to himself, and without any obligation to fact, upon the subject. Icarian imagination is the region in which he delights to sport. Where he is to take away your parliament, where he is to take away your first judicature, where he is to take away your money, where he is to increase your taxes, where he is to get an Irish tribute, there he is a plain direct matter-of-fact man; but where he is to pay you for all this, there he is poetic and prophetic; no longer a third-hand financier, but an inspired accountant. Fancy gives him her wand; Amalthea takes him by the hand; Ceres is in his train. The English capitalist, he thinks, will settle his family in the midst of those Irish Catholics, whom he does not think it safe to admit into parliament; as subjects, he thinks them dangerous; as a neighbouring multitude, safe. The English manufacturer will make this distinction: he will dread them as individuals, but will confide in them as a body, and settle his family and his property in the midst of them; he will therefore, the minister supposes, leave his mines, leave his machinery, leave his comforts, leave his habits, conquer his prejudices, and come over to Ireland

of

to meet his taxes, and miss his constitution. The manufacturers did not do this when the taxes of Ireland were few, or when there was no military government in Ireland: however, as prejudices against this country increase, he supposes that commercial confidence may increase likewise. There is no contradicting all this, because arguments which reason does not suggest reason cannot remove. Besides, the minister in all this does not argue, but foretell; now you cannot answer a prophet, you can only disbelieve him. The premier finds a great absentee draught: he gives you another; and, having secured to you two complaints, he engages to cure both. Among the principal causes of complaint, we may reckon another effect arising from the non-residence of the Irish landlords, whose presence on their own estates is necessary for the succour, as well as the improvement of their tenantry; that the peasants may not perish for want of medicines, of cordial, or cure, which they can only find in the administration of the landlord, who civilizes them, and regulates them in the capacity of a magistrate, while he covers them and husbands them in that of a protector, improving not only them but himself by the exercise of his virtues, as well as by the dispensation of his property, drawing together the two orders of society, the rich and the poor, until each may administer to the other, and civilize the one by giving, and the other by receiving; so that aristocracy and democracy may have a head and a body; so that the rich may bring on the poor, and the poor may support the rich; and both contributing to the strength, order, and beauty of the state, may form that pillar of society where all below is strength, and all above is grace. How does the minister's plan accomplish this? He withdraws the landed gentlemen, and then improves Irish manners by English factors. The minister proposes to you to give up the ancient inheritance of your country, to proclaim an utter and blank incapacity to make laws for your own people, and to register this proclamation in an act, which inflicts on this ancient nation an eternal disability; and he accompanies these monstrous proposals by undisguised terror and unqualified bribery; and this he calls no attack on the honour and dignity of the kingdom. The thing which he proposes to buy is what cannot be sold-liberty. For it he has nothing to give. Every thing of value which you possess you obtained under a free constitution: if you resign this, you must not only be slaves but idiots. His propositions are built upon nothing but your dishonour. He tells you (it is his main argument) that you are unfit to exercise a free constitution; and he affects to prove it by the experiment. Jacobinism grows, he says, out of the very state and condition of Ireland. I have heard of parliament impeaching ministers; but here is a minister impeaching parliament. He does more; he impeaches the parlia